By Comet Ziemer
TwitchCon San Diego organizers have been under fire for putting together an absolute embarrassment of a convention. With the mixture of health and safety issues, overly expensive food and water, and poor security, many people are calling for TwitchCon to come forward and apologize for the convention they put together.
On Friday, October 7, 2022, TwitchCon opened its doors to the public in San Diego for a weekend of fun and entertainment. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a huge wave of new creators and watchers to the Twitch platform, so there were many new people attending the convention that were not there in the years prior. Many big creators were expected to be there, such as Dream, Ranboo, Hasanabi, Quackity, GeorgeNotFound, and many more.
Late that Friday morning, there was supposed to be an interactive panel being hosted by members of the Minecraft server, the DreamSMP. The DreamSMP has millions of collective fans, and thousands of those fans would be attending the convention. TwitchCon organizers decided to host the panel in a room that could only hold 400 people. This caused a large crowd of people to gather outside of the panel room to attempt to get in. People in wheelchairs were shoved out of the way, people were getting trampled and crushed, and many fainted.
It wasn’t much better inside the panel. Convention staff failed to have enough mics or chairs to the streamers. During the Q&A portion of the panel, they allowed someone wearing an inappropriate shirt of the streamers to show it to everyone in the room, a majority of people being minors.
Later during creator and fan meet and greets, many people were turned away from entering the lines, despite some being there since 4 am. This caused more dangerous crowds and many people were refused water while they were crammed into hot rooms. All of that was only day 1 of the 3 day convention.
The next 2 days were slightly more tame, but still had many problems. Creators began reporting that they were being followed and stalked around their private hotels and while they were at the convention. Many people were unable to afford food and water due to it being roughly $7 for a water bottle. There was incredibly poor security and many people were able to enter without their bag even being searched.
Everything came crashing down when streamer Adriana Chechik jumped into a foam bit that was in the expo hall. There was not proper padding in the pit and it resulted in Chechik breaking her back in 2 separate places and shattering many bones. TwitchCon has failed to give a statement about the incident yet.
TwitchCon San Diego was an incredibly dangerous and poorly put-together excuse for a convention. With the number of people that were hurt, scammed, and put in danger at the con, it would be surprising if TwitchCon decided to host the convention again.
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